<?php
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 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'The professor wants me to pirate software?',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/10/12.jpg" alt="Autumn leaves along the bike path" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve come up with a whole new setup for how <code>minestats</code> should function, but I likely won&apos;t have time to code it for quite a while.
		I&apos;ve also thought about <code>minequest</code> more, and though I still like it on a high level, I don&apos;t think I like the implications that developing it would come with.
		It would require all my other mods to include these bonus abilities, and quite frankly, I&apos;m only interested in developing these abilities for the base Minetest Game items.
		It&apos;s not that it&apos;d be hard to develop them for my added items.
		After all, the bonus ability would just be a portable version ow whatever the node already does on its own (I don&apos;t typically develop decorative nodes; if it doesn&apos;t <strong>*do*</strong> something, I leave it for the Minetest Game developers to decide if it should be in the game.)
		It just isn&apos;t what I&apos;m after from those mods.
	</p>
	<p>
		I forgot to mention yesterday that after hitting the breaks pretty hard, the handlebars on my bike slipped into a bad angle.
		That was annoying.
		I thought the things were supposed to be <strong>*attached*</strong>.
		I couldn&apos;t turn them back into place, either.
		Tonight as I was headed home, I had too much to carry.
		I needed to stop quickly, but between my hands being tied up and the brakes being at the wrong angle, I couldn&apos;t reach them.
		So I did the sensible thing: I let myself hit a curb dead-on, making sure I came to a complete stop.
		The impact cause the handlebars to reach an even-more unfavourable angle.
		Joy.
		Once I got home and took a look though, I was there&apos;s a hex bolt I could loosen to make the handle bars more mobile.
		I was able to adjust them back to where they belong, then tighten that back up.
		Still, it seems like a bad part to have as a separate piece if it&apos;s going to cause soft impacts and even impactless breaking to displace it.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I tried to contact my professor using three different channels last week about the assignment designed so only Windows users could succeed.
		I first attempted contact within hours of the assignment being posted.
		It wouldn&apos;ve been within minutes, but I was having network issues.
		Still, the professor had all week and didn&apos;t get back to me.
		So I called them out on it in my <a href="/en/coursework/CS2301/#Unit5">learning journal</a>.
		The learning journal assignment in that course for that week was composed of two parts, and one of those parts was for me to discuss the week&apos;s activities and my reactions.
		Therefore, discussing what had been the main frustration of the week was a perfect fit, seeing as that frustration came specifically from that week&apos;s activities in that specific course.
		As a bonus, the professor grades the learning journal assignments themself, so it was a way to finally get through to them, even if it meant getting through after it was too late.
		Anyway, they responded with this:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Dear student the instructions are clear.
			Kindly download free version of Windows.
			You may also use <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve redacted the name of a proprietary hypervisor they recommended, but that was in fact a hypervisor option, not an alternative to Windows.
		First, I&apos;d like to point out that the instructions were <strong>*not*</strong> clear.
		They said &quot;do this if you have Windows&quot;, not &quot;go spend your life&apos;s savings on a copy of Windows to use for this week only&quot;.
		Specifically, the assignment said this, word for word, including the odd square brackets:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			For your assignment for [Windows Operating System] Download and run the Process Explorer utility from
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		After that, a $a[URI] was provided, but I don&apos;t need to link to Windows software from my journal.
		Ew.
		Just ... ew.
		Also, the claim that the instructions were clear felt like they were trying to justify the fact that they didn&apos;t respond to me after almost a full week had passed.
		Why is the professor there if they can&apos;t be reached?
		Why is the professor there if not to help students learn instead of leaving them alone and in the dark?
		Second, Microsoft doesn&apos;t give away copies of Windows to just anyone that wants them.
		They have some &quot;giveaways&quot; if you&apos;ve been entered into some sort of program, but I&apos;m not in any of those.
		Likewise, University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> isn&apos;t giving away copies of Windows.
		The only gratis copies of Windows for us normal folks are available only through pirating.
		Is the professor seriously saying I should pirate Windows?
		I doubt it.
		Either they know something I don&apos;t or, more likely, they mistakenly think there are gratis copies of Windows I could lay my hands on.
	</p>
	<p>
		As the learning journal seems to be the only way to reach the professor, I&apos;ve written a response directly to them to include in this week&apos;s submission.
		(Last week I spoke of them in the third person, as it&apos;s a journal assignment, not a letter.)
		We&apos;ll see if and how they respond to that in about a week, when I&apos;ve completed the rest of the assignment and submitted it.
		For the record, too, the grading instructions, which became available today, are vague enough that if the grading students actually read them, people not using Process Explorer should still get full marks.
		In fact, these instructions specifically mention the possibility of using commands to get the information, which is something Process Explorer doesn&apos;t use.
		It sounds to me like an opening for command line utilities to be accepted, and there&apos;s nothing in the grading instructions that are specifically against the use of non-Process-Explorer graphical utilities either.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2017/11-November/02.xhtml">2017-11-02</a>, this journal page was modified in order to redact the name of the university.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
